How to improve my gas mileage on squidoo

Posted on June 6, 2008 
Filed Under Drive Me Mad! | Leave a Comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

How to improve my gas mileage on squidoo

How to improve my gas mileage on squidoo,
originally uploaded by clivemcgonigal.

Just came across this. Will this help you battle the fuel crisis?

You talkin’ to me? Esperanto v. ASL Sign Language - and the winner is?

Posted on August 28, 2007 
Filed Under Lingo Chat | 12 Comments

Talking previously, as I was, about using rude sign language to piss off the French something occurred to me - hope it’s of interest to you - another use of sign language that can be used to insult anyone not just the French.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s I recall walking down the Holland Road in London - a mature tree and 4 storey town house lined road in an expensive area of central London. Just west a bit from Notting Hill, Portobello Road, Hugh Grant Avenue and the like but not too far west (Shepherds Bush and Acton) to be UNfashionable! A posh area to be sure. The big town houses there were for the very wealthy only - big gardens too, a certain sign of pricey real estate in London town.

The shops reflected this then, as they do now - fancy designers, expensive motor car showrooms, a posh bistro, a Hilton, the ‘must be seen in’ cafe etc. but one ’shop’ always stood out for me, not least because it was always empty and always appeared closed but I can’t say for sure as I never had the courage to turn the door handle and find out. So a great unknown to me was the Esperanto Language Center.

The Esperanto Language Center, if that was its true name it’s all getting fuddled now, sat there, in the middle of the Holland Road - mute and proud. No movement to be seen, no sounds emanating from within either ( but maybe it was sound-proofed I thought). There was an ‘Open’ sign on the door all day and night as I recall - what the heck was going on in there, if anything? I was continuously intrigued and remain so today. Through the window I saw wonderfully esoteric things such as maps, graphs and photographs of people accepting prizes (!)

Every time I walked by my heart used to go out to this sad lonely place sitting there amongst all this wealth. Shops nearby were flogging (london colloquialism for selling) expensive cars, clothes and croissants and here was this shop flogging a dead language. Or was it?

Maybe those Esperantists were holding secret midnight meetings there deep down under Holland Park tube station (in the sub/sub/sub basement) with the Esperanto equivalent of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (of James Bond villain fame) sitting at the head of the table with his large signet-ringed chubby fingered hand stroking, on his ample lap, his white Esperanto-Persian cat,

Blofeld: “Cosi, numero funf! Tu are ‘aving uno plan pour azione de neu idea of how nous c’n vende ze idee do Esperanto por el mondo?”

Number 5: “Desole, nombre Uno, mais toot le globa desire learno de nouvello lingo di choix…”

Blofeld: ” Esperanto?”

Number 5: ” Nein mein choufleur. Apologio mit aber al di ASL”.

Blofeld: ” ASL? What ze foch bin dis ASL commercio?”

Number 5: ” American Sign Language, mein leibchen chef, il est molto populare ces jours”.

Blofeld: ” Ich bin non contento a entendo this, number cinque!”

Blofeld presses a button that sends number #5 to a sub/sub/sub/sub basement where he is slapped around by Esperanto groupies, “Take zat batardi noxio!”

So has ASL (American Sign Language) taken on the mantle of a Global Language since Esperanto seemed to lose the plot somewhat?

Well let’s try and be objective here. has anyone succesfully taught chimpanzees or gorillas Esperanto?

Not as far as I’m aware and most of us have seen those great documentaries of primates, after some training, having a pretty amazing sign language capability and vocabulary. The reason they don’t talk to us is not because they are as dim as those buggers we know down the road, it’s that their vocal chords aren’t capable of making the right sounds to form words. But those buggers down the road… (NO, we aren’t going there).

Not long after those chimp ’signing’ videos came out then a very smart person (without doubt a woman) recognised that ASL might be used to communicate with babies before they get verbal. Wow! I’ve seen babies under a year old ’signing’ that they’re hungry, want a cuddle or need a diaper change - just incredible!

You see Esperanto’s weak point was always that its vocabulary and grammar would always favor one language above another - too much Italian, not enough Portugese and trying to create a set of grammar rules that incorporated all the languages of which it consisted. ASL has its own unique grammar and rules that crosses cultural barriers without alienating anyone.

Essentially it’s a Global Language in the truest sense. Cool or what?

So my suggestion is that we take it a stage further and teach as a second language, in every school in the world, American Sign Language! Think it through: the vocabulary is the same in every language. Speak (and believe me when I say that deaf people speak/sign to each other with as much emotion and vocabulary as you or I) to anyone wherever they come from in the world. Realise that sign language is the only language that can be be truly all things to all people.

OK there are 1 or 2 small problems (mainly with alphabetical ’spelling’ issues) but not enough to convince me that this is a bad idea. If you can talk ASL you can communicate with a similarly trained person: from the deserts of Sudan to the gardens of Japan, Milan to Yucatan. Every woman, every man…..

..this article dedicated to: Ian Drury - one of the world’s great communicators, sadly missed.

— Next Page →